Do you feel safer in Georgia?

I would not. The constant threat of Russian invasion would drive me crazy.

Of course I do. I can’t understand why stupid flight regulations don’t allow people to bring defensive weapons onto aircraft. Sheer insanity.

“defensive weapons”
no such thing exists.

I think it is plain that anyone who feels the need to carry a weapon at all times will never feel safe or comfortable.

Of course.

Who feels safe when guns are “regulated” to the point where honest people cannot own, transport or use them safely?

I would submit that anyone who feels that law protects them from people doing bad things is badly deluded.

Guns in bars, schools and churches… What’s to feel unsafe about?

I think Kevlar stock is going up…

Somebody mentioned this about the movie theater shooter. He was dressed in black, and he killed the lights before he started shooting. Can you imagine the carnage if 40 or 50 of the moviegoers where carrying guns and they opened fire on what they thought was the gunman. They would have been shooting at each other.

No.

The vast majority of people I know who carry guns are idiots.
The owner of the gun that shot the bullet into the air and then through my roof was an idiot.
The neighborhood kid who was joy-riding and and shot at a neighbor is an idiot.
The drunken friend of my ex-husband who shot himself in the foot is an idiot.

Gun ownership should be treated as a great responsibility; it should require proficiency testing, licensing, and insurance.

That it is easier to own a gun than a car is fucking idiocy.

I did, Georgia was my first girlfriend & I always used a condom.

Georgia, Atlanta especially was such an improvement over the absolutely exhausting pretense of the typical New Yorker:

So you’ve lived in NYC your entire life. So you’re so Jewsh it just plain hurts.

Did it ever occur to you that’s there’s those of us that can’t bring ourselves do give an damn?

I left the God blessed south to marry a woman that I adore intensely. A Cali girl that for whatever reason saw New York as some sort of aspiration.

You fucking Yankees have no concept of gentility. You are brusk and rude. To me your North Eastern accent and attitude is like fingernails on a chalkboard.

I’d return to the infinitely cooler south in a heartbeat.

All of you with your Tri State ‘tude can promptly go fuck yourselves.

What puzzles me is the great surprise and consternation on the part of everyone living in this shooting gallery at the rate of slaughter. We are already submerged in a sea of weapons sufficient to arm every citizen and most of the pets. To add to the gun idiocy which defines the “home of the brave”, there’s the delightful bonus of nonexistent mental health care. The gun lobby will claim that our spectacular firearms homicide rate is merely the result of unrestrained criminals, but the country’s unparalleled gun fetish defies such simplistic silliness as a reasonable explanation.

I feel safe in places where guns are restricted, and where one needs a reason and a license to carry one. I’m comfortable in the New England states. I’d be very ill at ease in Georgia.

All that bill did was let permit holders carry in a few more places. The world will not end and 2nd amendment freedom was not greatly enhanced. Personally I think we have the carry permit system wrong. There needs to be a 2 tier system where the first stays as is and the 2nd requires more strict screening and some more advanced training and testing. Then that person should legally be able to carry everywhere. Frankly many of the gun laws are silly and don’t make much sense. They are often written by people who don’t know anything about them so they get a lot wrong. I personally feel pretty safe around them and I don’t really understand why the presence of one freaks people out so much. Most permit holders get the permit for protection against bullshit laws while they are doing innocent things like driving to the range, gun shop or going hunting. I know perhaps 10–15 permit holders and none carry routinely. Rarely if at all is the norm. I’d like to see statistics that show the number of permit holders who commit crime or do stupid shit. I really don’t think there is anything to worry about here.

Statistically, you have a much greater chance of dying by a car, a fall, or poisoned, than you’re by a firearm.

link

And even with firearms, you’re more likely to kill yourself, than you’re to kill someone else.

So it is flawed logic to worry about gun violence when considering these stats.

@SecondHandStoke Did you answer the wrong question?
@stanleybmanly Do you own a gun?

Do we need guns at school? At church? In a bar? Those are 3 places people tend to get heated. Crowded places. @Adirondackwannabe makes a good point about everybody whipping out guns and freaking out, but I agree with @ARE_you_kidding_me that the likelihood of more concealed permits being approved, issued and used is not what will happen. People seem to think this is a free for all to be packing heat. That would be Arizona. People have holsters on in public routinely, and I don’t hear a slew of massacre stories.
I personally have no problems with qualified and level headed gun owners having one nearby.

I’m confused. To me, open carry means, the gun can be showing on your person. It looks like the law is expanding where guns can be carried. When you live in a state like GA I think everyone figures someone might have a gun. I’ve lived in the south and the people talk about guns all the time. Signs in bars telling patrons no guns allowed. It’s not that you feel guns are all around you all the time, but whether there is a law or not, people have guns. In those states they don’t care much about the laws. The governor just made legal what people were probably doing anyway. I was a little uncomfortable living in a very gun oriented place. I am glad to live in a place now with much less gun violence and I never feel like people are carrying guns.

As far as concealed carry vs. open carry. I tend to think open is a good thing. You know the guy has a gun. You can leave if you are uncomfortable around guns.

Here is a nice, brief rundown of some of the most key items included in the bill, which is about much more than just allowing them on school and church property and in bar and government establishments. Most noteable, IMO, is that firearms dealers no longer have to keep records of sales. Databases on license holders may no longer span multiple jurisdictions. Fingerprinting for a license is no longer required. Those, to me, are pretty substantial changes.

@JLeslie You are correct in your interpretation of open carry vs. concealed carry. My response above may have been confusing. Georgia has an open carry option, which means that the 5% of state residents with permits may choose to show or not. In that regard the law has not changed.

The requirements to obtain a license, other than fingerprinting, are not changing. There will not be a flood of new licenses issued.

You can add Georgia to my list of states to avoid (especially if I feel like grabbing a cold beer.) Not many states left I have much use for, including the one I’m living in.

We had a similar law for “guns in bars” here in Tennessee that was passed but later revoked. It allowed permit holders to carry where alcohol was served but they were still strictly forbidden from consuming any. This was intended to resolve the situation where carry holders could go eat somewhere like applebees and not have to disarm. Businesses still had the choice to allow them or not. Thank the media for giving the public an image of people drinking and carrying guns. We had the same deal for public parks but local politicians made their own laws and ordinances that made some ok and others not. It has made everything a huge mess with all of the legal gray areas. It is really easy for someone to screw up and carry where they are not allowed causing serious legal issues for them.

@ARE_you_kidding_me In Memphis all the bars had signs up no guns allowed. The whole thing is bazaar to me. Walking into a bar and seeing that sign still shocks me. However living in the Memphis area I see why the people there think differently about guns than people in other parts of the country. Not just Memohis, but other places similar to Memphos, the mindset, and the actual situation there. It’s very different living in a place where sommuch of the population thinks guns are God’s gift to America and living in a place where people are unfamiliar with guns and never think about guns. the two sides don’t understand each other very well. I do a little better now having lived in both situations, but it is still frustrating for me. I feel like it is another thing that is unsolvable in this country. I would love to be wrong.

I didn’t know the law had forbidden gun carriers to drink, that makes some sense at least. Still being in a place where people are drinking heavily like a bar even if the gun holder isn’t drinking could result in a bad situation. I can see why restaurants would be a different case. But, that is such a fuzzy line, because so many “bars” serve food, in contrast to restaurants that serve drinks. Can the law differentiate between those two? I don’t know.

You cannot carry and drink, carry permit or not. Period. They will lock you up and revoke your permit for that. This has always been the case. The media and anti-gun groups added the word “bar” to the bill.

@ARE_you_kidding_me I figured that was always the law. It just seems to me that politicians in those states love to talk about guns and the public loves that a politician will increase a gun carriers rights. For the most part I see it as bullshit politics.

It is, politics has made this an issue when most people were just fine keeping things the way they were. The fear machine has needlessly whipped up both side of this into a frenzy. Gun owners are afraid of loosing their rights and non gun owner’s think that rifles can shoot down airplanes now and that drunk hillbillies can pack heat wherever they want.

@GloPro No I don’t own a gun, but I know how and where to acquire weaponry and ammo sufficient to equip a Vietnam era infantry squad. I’m reasonably certain that I could be armed to the teeth within an hour and a half.

@stanleybmanly Then I’m coming to your house when the zombie apocalypse hits! You are correct in how many guns are owned in the US. Only a small percentage of those owners have carry permits.

I don’t agree with the new bill in it’s entirety, but I agree that media sensationalism gets people that don’t really know much about guns or gun issues in a frenzy. It makes total sense that restaurants that serve were turned into bars for national news. People with licenses should all be aware that they cannot drink and carry anymore than drink and drive, and the result of doing all three is bad news everywhere in the US.

I live in California and frequent ranges in Nevada, so I feel more comfortable having documentation when driving across state lines with multiple guns.

It may be more common for people in the south to own guns because a greater percentage kill what they eat and are hunters. The statistic of 5% of permits is significant in that it is no different than anywhere else in the country. Everyone in the south isn’t carrying. 5% is 5%, regardless. You do not need permits for carrying a gun to hunt, other than the kill tags, that I am aware of. It might be nice to have if you frequently hunt big game and tote serious weapons around in your vehicle. Please someone correct me if I’m wrong on that.

@GloPro No, you do not generally need one to hunt. If you don’t have a permit it can be easy to break draconian and cryptic laws that govern where and how you transport firearms. Legally It’s safer to just get a permit. The lines are just clearer and it makes following the law easier.

Don’t really care about the gun thing – I never thought of Georgia as a very safe place – but my husband and I were considering a vacation in Atlanta later this year until I saw how expensive that damn place is. We wanted to go to the aquarium and Six Flags, but hotels are charging $200/night and the aquarium charges $65 per person (in addition to admission) to spend 15 minutes touching a dolphin. Uh…no. We can go to Orlando, pay $100/night at a really nice hotel, and visit Sea World, Busch Gardens, Aquatica, and Discovery Cove (where you can actually swim with a dolphin and be in the water with them) within the week all for under $2000, including gas and food. Screw Atlanta – that place seems pretty ghetto, anyway.

Like someone said on fb “Getting a camp chair, popcorn and beer and I’m just gonna watch Georgia.”

Allowing them into bars really slays me. That is SUCH a freaking no brainer. Now guys are going to be waking up in the clink the next morning, not with an assault and battery charge (that they don’t remember committing,) but with murder charges (that they don’t remember committing.)

As sad as I think it is that things have gotten so violent that it has come down to the need to arm or defend one’s self, I still can’t condemn people for wanting the right to defend themselves.

Any law that helps to protect the law abiding citizen against the criminal element is a good one.

I honestly think that most people who carry guns are just doing it to be macho. They don’t really feel like they need to defend themselves.

They are just waiting and itching for an opportunity to use it.
An army of Zimmermans, the lot.

Saying it is ‘allowing citizens to protect themselves’ is prejudging the issue and assumes that people already feel less safe in Georgia.

^ Who anywhere feels truly safe?